Remembering Sleepy Hollow

[avrelia]

Recently I’ve been thinking about the Sleepy Hollow. The tv series one. As a tragic example of the creators being totally blind about the thing they created and destroying everything that was good about it in the process. There is no question that the creators should be able to tell the story they want to tell. The problem was, the story they wanted to tell – the one of Rip Van Winkle, a man out of his time, wasn’t the one anyone wanted to watch. They actually pitched it initially as the updated Rip Van Winkle, weren’t approved and moved on to updated Sleepy Hollow idea. (I read it somewhere and cannot find the source right now). Anyway. Judging by the way it went for four seasons they still wanted their story to be about a lonely white man from 18th century finding himself in 21st one.
Fair enough. The problem was it was not the story we wanted to watch, and it was not the story we initially saw – in season one. And we, the viewers, loved that story! It was a story of two sisters, two Black girls, Abbie and Jenny Mills who were both close and the opposite to each other. Sudden appearance of the inexplicable and terrifying Headless Horseman made Abbie, a policewoman in a small town in Upstate New York to re-think a lot of what she was convinced she knew about life and to battle apocalyptic forces with a weird man out of time, Ichabod Crane. It was crazy, it was glorious, it was delightful. The relationship between Ichabod Crane and the present, 21st century were a lot of fun, and his bouncing of Abbie Mills no-nonsense attitude had a lot of sparks. The supporting cast was amazing, and they all seemed to be fully alive characters, even the ones that were actually dead. And were played by the people of color (many of them, that is). The only problem seemed to be Katrina, the wife of Crane, stuck in the purgatory. The only thing we knew about that she is a powerful witch. Which is not really a character by itself.
Many hate her, but I can’t – I can’t hate an empty space. It was not her fault the was nothing else to do. Maybe another actress could have invented a personality for the heroine by herself, but it was really the writers’ job. And the only thing writers could come up with for the second season was the love triangle. I still has no idea about her. Why was she a witch? Why she married Ichabod? What she loved? Whereas the characters played by Nichole Beharie and Lindsay Greenwood, Orlando Jones, John Cho, Clancy Brown, Nicholas Gonzales, etc were memorable and understandable.
Anyway, the creators seemed to be really in love with Ichabod Crane, and they believed the fans, too. So they got rid of all the interesting characters beside him and turned it all into a family melodrama. Abbie Mills got relegated to the sidekick until the opportunity arose for her to sacrifice herself for the pretty white man. And they got surprised when everyone hated it.
I still have my dvds of season one, full of delight and hope. But every time I think about the Sleepy Hollow, I feel regret – the show wasted great actors and great possibilities and the goodwill of the viewers so thoroughly by not seeing what they created and why it worked at the beginning. Alas. But we’ll always have the beautiful scenes when Abbie Mills and Frank Irving were mocking Ichabod Crane.

Comments

[monanotlisa]

Sigh, you're right -- that was quite a show; I loved Abbie so much.

[avrelia]

Such a waste of an awesome character! how is that they couldn't see it?

[shadowscast]

For somebody who's never seen it at all: do you think it would be worthwhile to watch just season 1, with no intention of watching anything that comes after? Or does it leave off with too many cliffhanger plot threads to make that enjoyable?

[avrelia]

Yes, I think. It was a lot of fun, really, and while season 1 does end in a little cliffhanger, it's fine, knowing that it will resolve itself without much consequence except boredom. It should work.

[shadowkat]

I have to admit that I gave up on it part-way through S2, pretty much for the reasons you stated. I wasn't that interested in the people surrounding Icabode Crane and his witch of a wife, and his back story. I was more interested in Abby Mills and the characters surrounding Abby, also the relationship between Abby and Icabode. When the writers drifted away from that - which they kind of did at the end of S1, I stopped watching, so did everyone else I knew.

[avrelia]

I gave up someplace in season 2 as well. I don't remember - maybe I finished it, maybe not, I definitely hasn't seen any of season 3, and quite happy about it. It's kind of mind-boggling - to lose that spectacularly

[shadowkat]

It is, the show was really popular, and then we all kind of gave up at the same time. My mother was even into it - and gave up. I think she hung in there longer than I did. I remember the first season, but not much after it. I think it lost me around the time they chose to give the headless horseman and Katrina's back story - which I decided was really dumb, and that was the end of it.

[eglantiere]

i'm still in grief over sleepy hollow. i loved the first season so much! and then - as you say. goddamn.

[avrelia]

in every fandom there is a portion of fans dissatisfied with the developments at some point. But I don't remember that unity in loving the first season and being upset with everything that came later. THere are controversial endings, there were drops in quality, there is the Game of Thrones, but really, this one should be in all the textbooks about what not to do.